I created a notebook for Pancakes, and broke out different chapters into separate notebooks so I was able to make a Notebook Stack that was much more manageable. My book is divided into six sections so creating notebooks to map to each section made the most sense.

Figure Out Your Process, with Evernote

I tested recipes in batches of 5-6. My process for recipe testing and writing went something like this: I’d write out the recipe loosely, make it, then write all my notes about it in Evernote. I made so many recipes that visual cues were vital so I’d use Evernote on my iPhone to snap a photo of the dish to include along with the recipe notes.

Get Your Shopping Organized

When you’re testing a lot of recipes, you’re constantly headed to the grocery store. I wrote shopping lists for the book in Evernote by simply cutting and pasting ingredients from recipe notes into a New Note. At the store, I could simply reference the note in Evernote on my phone.

Coming Up with a Template

A lot of the recipes in my book are from a base, meaning they’re variations of one recipe. By saving all my recipe notes in Evernote, I was able to quickly compare each new recipe to previous ones, and adapt when I saw fit. For example, one time I changed up an ingredient in a new recipe; to make sure the new recipe would come out just right, I needed to look at the salt content in all previous recipes. I was able to do a quick search for ‘salt’ and look across a bunch of recipes to see how much salt was in each recipe. From there, I could tweak accordingly.

Cleaning Things Up

The pre-cleaned version of my book in Evernote is pretty messy, but having everything I needed in Evernote made it so easy to compile my manuscript. I was able to revise all my recipes, comb through to ensure that I had incorporated all of my notes, and update any inconsistencies. From there, I was able to cut and paste my cleaned up recipes into the manuscript.

Keep it All in One Place

Having all of my work in one contained place, and being able to flip through every recipe easily using arrows for scrolling versus opening up separate documents, saved me a ton of time. With Evernote, I was able to input everything I needed — notes, photos, to-dos, shopping lists — and not have to worry about scrolling through a huge document that was hard to search through and tedious to organize.

Evernote for Everything Else

In addition to writing my entire book in Evernote, I also write all my blog posts with recipes in Evernote. The app also comes in handy for daily to-dos (I love to check them off, don’t you?).

I’ve just started planning a cook book to pass on to my kids, filled with family recipes from their great-grandmother, grandmothers, aunts, grandpa and me! This is a great idea of collecting them, testing them and putting them into some sort of category. Thank you for the inspiration!

Lynnette White McMahon—

I’ve just started planning a cook book to pass on to my kids, filled with family recipes from their great-grandmother, grandmothers, aunts, grandpa and me! This is a great idea of collecting them, testing them and putting them into some sort of category. Thank you for the inspiration!

josep2—

I’ve been keeping my recipes on Evernote for a year now. Best decision ever.

Riz Ainuddin—

I want more of these Evernote tips. It’s just awesome. Didn’t think of such workflow. Now I’m aligned with Evernote more.

Riz Ainuddin—

I want more of these Evernote tips. It’s just awesome. Didn’t think of such workflow. Now I’m aligned with Evernote more.

Eliakim Rongoma Runya—

I hope to share my recipe soon. its so interesting to learn how others do

Eliakim Rongoma Runya—

I hope to share my recipe soon. its so interesting to learn how others do